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The Callie Crossley Show

A production of

Mon., Oct. 3Women in the Hip-Hop Biz

Women in the Hip Hop Biz

For as long as there's been music, there's been the music business. And as long as the business has existed, powerful executives, tastemakers and talent-chasers, have ruled the roost - deciding what to push, what to bury and who will the Next Big Thing. But, especially in hip-hop and urban music, it's long been a man's turf, the domain of heavyweights like Motown's Berry Gordy, Def Jam's Russell Simmons, and LaFace Records' L.A. Reid. These were men who bucked trends and became as legendary as the artists themselves.

But times and tastes change, and now female executives have ascended to the highest offices at the country's biggest labels. They preside over stables of artists reflecting the diversity of taste - and the diversity - of audiences. Today, Berklee College of Music hosts a conference featuring some of music's most powerful female executives, the Business of Hip-Hop/Urban Music Symposium. We're joined by Darcie Nicole, organizer of the conference, and Latrice Burnette, co-founder of GAME Media, a digital media strategy company for artists, and formerly of Roc-a-Fella and Atlantic Records.
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ABOUT THE CALLIE CROSSLEY SHOW

Thursday, July 5, 2012

*Originally aired 11/02/12Walter Mosley on The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Late last year, Walter Mosley joined us to talk about his latest novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Mosley’s protagonist, Ptolemy Grey, is an old, ailing recluse living in a dump of a cluttered apartment. His mind, on a downward spiral of dementia, is equally cluttered with a mashup of memories: the death of his wife, the lynching of a friend, his service in World War II. Then everything changes when he’s offered a Faustian bargain—a drug that will restore his brain in exchange for a shorter life. He takes the plunge, hoping mental clarity will help him solve a murder. Though Mosley may be best known for detective novels, his writing spans all genres: literary fiction, science fiction, crime and social commentary. In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosely uses threads from all of these styles to tell the story of mortality and morality.